Obama seeks filter-free news

At a time when his Washington honeymoon is turning into a hazing, President Barack Obama and his team are launched on a strategy to sail above the traditional White House press corps by reaching out to liberal commentators, local reporters and ethnic media.

The highest-profile moments in the new approach have been well-noted, such as the president giving an interview to progressive radio host Ed Schultz and Obama calling on a reporter from the liberal-leaning Huffington Post at his first news conference.

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But those moves are only part of a much larger strategy aimed at communicating directly with audiences the White House believes are more sympathetic to the president’s agenda — and one in which much of the work is being done by Obama’s top advisers.

On the day Obama released his ambitious spending plan, the administration put White House budget director Peter Orszag on a conference call with liberal-leaning writers. Senior administration aides have followed up by promoting the budget to local radio talk shows during morning drive time.

Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden’s economic adviser and a favorite of the labor-liberal wing of the Democratic Party, also held a conference call with friendly reporters.

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Obama himself plans to meet soon with liberal bloggers, according to an administration official. With little fanfare, he’s already sat for interviews with Black Enterprise magazine, Telemundo and Los Angeles-based Hispanic radio host Eddie “Piolin” Sotelo.

In many ways, Obama’s effort is simply the latest expression of a familiar phenomenon. It is the perennial hope of presidents — especially early in their administrations — that they can escape the filter of an often-skeptical Washington press corps and communicate directly with a target audience.

But Obama now has advantages not enjoyed by some of his predecessors, from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who were most scornful of the motives of Washington reporters.

Obama can exploit the fact that the traditional newspapers and networks are weakened by competition from cable and the Web, and by a faltering business model. What’s more, the proliferation of outlets has been embraced in recent years by a newly energized liberal base — eager to match the decades-old success of conservatives in building media channels to circumvent what they see as a biased or trivia-minded Washington press corps.

Obama has a special stake in encouraging this movement. The campaign that vaulted him to power began mostly outside his party’s Washington establishment and was based heavily on the strength of his personality and promises to change the capital’s culture.

At his first news conference, for instance, his aides seated Schultz in the front row and called on reporter Sam Stein from The Huffington Post.